Politics

Trump disbands advisory councils after string of resignations

Faced with a string of resignations from his advisory panels, President Trump has disbanded two groups he had formed to provide policy and economic guidance. He's seen here after a news conference Tuesday.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Bill Chappell | NPR|August 16, 2017

With a string of executives leaving his manufacturing council in the wake of President Trump's controversial remarks about white supremacists, the president is disbanding the group he created in January. Trump said he's also ending his Strategy and Policy Forum, which he formed in December.

"Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!" President Trump said in a tweet.

The move came shortly after two executives — 3M's Inge Thulin and Campbell Soup's Denise Morrison — said on Wednesday that they would be leaving the manufacturing council established by Trump, who has long touted the need to support American manufacturing jobs.

"Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville", Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison stated, referring to Trump's much-criticized response to the white supremacist rally that resulted in the death of a counter-protester over the weekend.

The moves came one day after the resignations of Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing; Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO; and Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO's deputy chief of staff.

"I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do," Paul wrote in a tweet Tuesday morning.

Trump's decision to wind down the group comes after he struck a defiant tone about the resignations this week.

On Monday, Trump said, "Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council,he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!"

On Tuesday, Trump stated, "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!"

On the same day, executives from and the nonprofit Alliance for American Manufacturing.

When the council was formed back in January, the White House said the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative would allow the president to meet with "some of the world's most successful and creative business leaders to share their experiences and gain their insights."